Alongside buying millions of pounds worth of property for Tomes Homes and our investors, I advise Property Businesses worth tens of millions of pounds on their property strategies. And all of this is done alongside going on holiday EVERY 6 weeks. That’s why they call me The Property Strategist 😉 And I want to help ensure your property business enables YOU to create the lifestyle that you want too.  

If you decided to get into property because you wanted to have more freedom & time… and the MONEY to actually enjoy this freedom and time, then this is for you! I’ve seen first-hand how implementing these principles has lead my clients to secure more deals, raise more finance and take their property businesses to the next level. Clients who have been brand new to property, right through to clients who have got portfolios worth tens of £millions and have not only improved their businesses but ALSO their lifestyles by understanding and embracing what I am about to share with you. 

In order to have a truly successful property business that is both scalable and sustainable, you need two things…  

Input your text in this areaFirst of all you need to know HOW to actually do property, you need the Technical Property Knowledge. Sounds pretty obvious, but actually I’ve found whilst people are often happy to spend tens of thousands of pounds on a university degree to get educated in their chosen field, there is resistance to doing the same in property. But I’m actually not going to focus on this today, because in my experience it’s the second area where too many property investors are missing a trick, and that’s Property Business Strategy. When you get started in property you are building a BUSINESS (whether or not you realise it at the time!), and therefore you need a BUSINESS STRATEGY to ensure you get the time, freedom and money you desire from it.  

Over the last 5.5 years by getting the Technical Property Knowledge, and combining this with kick-ass PROPERty Strategy we’ve built a property portfolio worth over £5.5M. Understanding and implementing PROPER Strategy means that between buying blocks of flats to grow our buy-to-let portfolio and running my Property Business Strategy Consultancy we still have the TIME & FREEDOM to go on holiday every 6 weeks, because for us that’s the point of it all!  

Now, let’s get something cleared up, as I’ve found this word ‘strategy’ is MASSIVELY overused in property. It gets thrown around all over the place. In property it gets used to describe whether you are doing single lets, HMO’s, Serviced Accommodation, Commercial Conversions, Developments… But there’s a massive problem with this… because these are NOT actually strategy. These are what I call Business Models: “a plan for the successful operation of a business”. Now you need to know your business model, but it is not strategy. And the fact it gets called strategy in property circles can lure you into a false sense of security of thinking that you HAVE a strategy… when you don’t. That’s why I describe what I do as PROPERty Strategy – because it is PROPER Property Strategy.  

The dictionary definition of Strategy is: “A plan designed to achieve an overall aim”. The OVERALL AIM part is the crux of this. If your ‘overall aim’ is for your property business to provide you with more time with your family or more time to travel, then building a portfolio of HMO’s (for example) does NOT automatically mean you will have this. In fact, it can give you the exact opposite! So therefore you really need to be very clear on what YOUR overall aim is…  

5.5 years ago I was coming to the end of a week away on a skiing holiday in the French Alps. The holiday had been amazing, but that sinking feeling had started to hit my stomach – you know, the sinking feeling that you get in the pit of your stomach when you have to go back to work on Monday!! I gazed out the window of our apartment at the snowy world outside just WISHING that there was a way I could go on holiday more – have as many adventures as I wanted to! And to not HAVE to go back on Monday. As much as my job in Market Research was a fantastic job working with great people, I just didn’t want anyone else to call the shots on how I got to live my life anymore. That was the moment I decided I needed to start hatching a plan for a more freedom and time in the future, and although I didn’t know quite how yet, I thought property could be the way to do it…

5.5 years since the plan began… that’s me back outside the place where this all started; but this time we weren’t just there for a week… this time we were away skiing for a WHOLE MONTH. This is the life that I WISHED for when sitting in that little apartment 5.5 years ago… But it definitely wasn’t just as easy as ‘wishing’ for it to be this way – it’s been a combination of getting the right Technical Property Knowledge AND implementing PROPERty Strategy.  

There is a strong reason why you started in property (or are starting), and you need to make sure your business enables you to achieve that success… Too often I see peoples’ property businesses giving them the opposite of what they wanted when they started. It doesn’t need to be that way. There is no magic to being able to go on holiday for a month or every 6 weeks, or only ever working a 3 day week – it’s about being doggedly strategic, and you can do that too.

Input your text in this areaSo the first thing to do is get way clearer on the results you want your property business to provide you – your ‘overall aim’. A better way to describe this, is your Vision. So the killer question really is, what is YOUR VISION? I have found that great Visions that will inspire, motivate AND create results that move you towards it every day are always crafted around a few key areas. This is what lead me to creating my Vision Quickstart Guide – you can use this to help you to begin crafting your ideal vision of your future. Answer the questions here in as much detail as you can, and when answering imagine it is your life 10 years from now…

Once you’ve done this, then you can start creating the plan for making the Vision a reality… A great Strategy needs to encompass all areas of your business, so you need to have a solid strategy in each of these 5 areas: Marketing, Sales, Delivery, Finance, Team. Not all of these are terms we hear used a lot in property investing circles, right? But they should be, as these are the core principals of any business!

Every truly successful business has put emphasis and focus across each of these areas. But how do you start to build a strategy around these?! Well the best way to start is by defining what these areas of strategy mean for you in your property business. For example, the whole point of marketing in any business is to attract potential leads/customers/clients to you right? 

Input your text in this areaSo you need to ask yourself, what and who are you hoping to attract to you through your marketing? I would suggest probably some deals, right? Well if you want a solid marketing strategy for attracting great deals to you, then first of all you need to be really clear about what exactly a ‘great deal’ looks like to you. This is so important because if you want to have time & freedom to do other things in your life, then your property business needs to be systemised to work without you. And in order for it to be systemised everything you do needs to be replicable! Therefore, within marketing you need to start by getting clarity on exactly what a deal looks like to you (for example, area, building type, size, minimum returns, etc.) because then you can start building the system to consistently attract those deals to you (and to not feel guilty about turning down deals that don’t meet your criteria!). So the first step to creating your strategy is to look at each of the 5 areas like this and work out exactly what they mean for your business.  

Strategy is THE HIGHEST VALUE area in which you can spend your time, but unfortunately most business owners (not just in property) do not prioritise it… because they are too busy! But the reason they are too busy… is because they are not prioritising time for strategy! So no matter what stage you are at in building your property business, MAKE TIME for this. Business Strategy is not taught at school, so most business owners never learn it, never mind implement it… and we wonder why 96% of start-up businesses fail in the first 5 years?!  

You are building a property BUSINESS, and if you treat it like a business then it will PAY YOU like one. And not only that, but it can provide you with FREEDOM & TIME to use as you choose – whether that be a holiday every 6 weeks or anything else for that matter 😉

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